Sepp Blatter plans a drastic restructuring of FIFA, which could see Britain losing many of its privileges on football’s governing body.
Blatter’s reign of the crisis-hit organisation is set to end later this year with reports today that the election of a new FIFA president will be held on December 16.
Domenico Scala, head of FIFA’s independent audit and compliance committee, says before Blatter leaves he hopes to push through reforms which he considers “his legacy”.
Central to this is reducing the FIFA executive which has 24 elected members.
It is thought that the executive could be cut to 15 and that is where Britain could suffer.
At present eight of the FIFA executive are from UEFA countries and one of those seats is guaranteed to be a British representative, who sits on the committee as a vice-president.
In a slimmed down executive it would be difficult to justify such a seat for Britain and there is a strong possibility the home nations would lose their automatic spot.
The front-runners to replace Blatter
That would be sweet revenge for Blatter on the British, whose press he believes has played a major part in his downfall.
Although the Swiss was re-elected as president of FIFA last month he stood down just days later saying “his mandate does not appear to be supported by everybody”.
It followed days of turmoil for FIFA after the arrest of 14 people, including nine current and former FIFA executives, as part of a £100m corruption probe. Blatter is not among those accused.
Any changes to the executive would require a two thirds majority of the FIFA Congress and it likely that they will vote on the proposals at their meeting in Zurich before they vote for a new president. The date for that meeting will be confirmed next month.
The election two weeks ago showed Blatter still commands a huge majority in the Congress and FIFA insiders are confident that any such reform plans will be approved by his supporters as a final gift to their outgoing boss.
